Chapter 24: His Key

I looked at the key on the table for a long time.

I looked into the empty sewing room, and then I picked up my phone.

Ingrid answered on the first ring.

"She called me at six," she said. "She told me not to tell you where."

"Ingrid."

"Rule four doesn't bind me. I didn't agree to it." She breathed out.

"It's the warehouse, Elias. She asked me to bring everyone at noon."

"Everyone?"

"The whole studio. She said you'd want a witness."

I stood in the kitchen with the phone against my ear and could not make a sound.

"I'll drive," Ingrid said. "Put on a clean shirt."

The old warehouse stood at the end of a cracked street in Allston.

The bricks had gone black, and the loading door still stuck.

I had not been inside in six years.

Ingrid parked, and the four designers climbed out of the car behind us.

The door was open.

Adeline stood in the middle of the bare concrete floor with her coat on and her hands in her pockets.

The space heater from the first winter sat beside her, unplugged.

The drafting table was gone, and the cot, and the long window still let in the same thin gray light.

She turned when she heard us.

She looked tired, and she had not slept.

"You came," she said.

"You left a key on my table."

"I did."

"With no note."

"I thought a note would be asking." She tried to smile and it failed.

"I broke rule one last night. I didn't sleep in the guest room. I thought I'd stop there."

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